Darkest Days by Dates Down Under: Part 3
Transport Themed Terrorism — Wellington Trades Hall Bombing, March 27 1984
This "Darkest Days by Dates Down Under" series explores how New Zealand’s crises are thematically encoded with historical riffs to signal authorship, cooperation, scapegoats and caution — while telegraphing hidden objectives.Introduction
The bombing of the Trades Hall on Vivian Street, Wellington in 1984 remains ‘unsolved’, and as does the mystery over why the event wasn’t classed as terrorism.
Although the blast only killed one person, Ernie Abbott, the caretaker of the Trade Union building, by all accounts the leadership of Wellington’s Trade Union movement narrowly escaped being wiped out by the exploding suitcase packed with gelignite.
In this dispatch former Māori Television news and current affairs editor Steve Snoopman, reveals the uncanny coincidences of dates associated with the bombing.
In this “Darkest Days by Dates Down Under” series, Snoopman surveys the curious coincidences of calamities, catastrophes, or crises that jolted the nation while power, wealth and control were accumulated. In this disturbing multi-decade sketch, Snoopman traces the creepy trail of spooky minds, who he believes plot machinations with an eye on the past and a dark vision of the future. The circumstantial evidence reveals an awful picture of each new administration becoming embroiled in a cover-up of a staged event made to appear as an accident, a natural disaster, or a crisis caused by an unhinged man, or an ‘unsolved’ crime. As a modus operandi, such historical riffing works to signal cooperation, threats, scapegoats and hidden objectives.
Many of the commentaries on the Trades Hall Bombing have focussed on a few key suspects, within a narrative paradigm of a man with a vendetta aimed at the unions.
Yet, the prima facie evidence presented in this Darkest Days by Dates Down Under” dispatch, indicates that a criminal deep state network operating in New Zealand, has been able to sustain the mystery over the Trades Hall Bombing for four decades. They appear to enjoy their prowess for penetrating institutions to control probes. The apparent metaphors codified into the Trades Hall Bombing of 27 March 1984, seem to communicate a capitalist class superiority complex over the unions of New Zealand.
Key Finding: The Trades Hall Bombing was thematically encoded with transport and class conflict metaphors codified into the historical riffs to signal cooperation authorship, and caution — while telegraphing a hidden objective that a homegrown deep state network had free rein to inflict terrorism with impunity.
Terrorism, according to the Oxford Universal Dictionary [1933 Edition revised 1964. 3rd Edition], is a system of terror, government by intimidation; the system of the ‘Terror’ (1793-4); a policy intended to strike with terror those against whom it is adopted; the fact of terrorizing or condiiton of being terrorized (such as in 1798 during the French Revolution).
Trades Hall Bombing, March 27 1984 — Death Toll: 1
On March 27 1984, a bombing of a New Zealand workers’ union headquarters, known as the Trades Hall, on Vivian Street, Wellington, shocked the nation. The case wasn’t classified as terrorism since the motive was deemed unclear. Federation of Labour Secretary Ken Douglas said the police never followed up the presence of an ex-MI5 intelligence operative, who had been given safe haven in N.Z. after he infiltrated the IRA and been exposed by one of the IRA’s 13 units based in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
Unionist Helen Kelly blamed Muldoon’s anti-unionist hysteria for creating the climate that led to the bombing. Muldoon, who had introduced voluntary unionism, served in World War II with the 37th Battalion and the Divisional Cavalry Regiment.
Worker unions had been in a deadlock with employers across various industries, when in June 1982, Muldoon had imposed a price and wage freeze amid high inflation. The imposition of a freeze on prices meant that as time passed, the various business associations could contrive an argument that since prices were no longer rising, the unions’ justification for wage increases to keep up with inflation, had no validity.
Trade unionist, Graham Kelly, a former MP and high commissioner, wrote that the bomb was intended to kill all of the union leadership, who had only left the building a short time before the blast. It killed one person, building caretaker Ernie Abbott (64).
At 5:19pm, while Mr Abbott was locking up the Trades Hall, he picked up a suitcase after a meeting of the Wellington Trades Council. The Flight suitcase contained a motion-senstive mercury switch, a stove timer detonator, safety fuses, a nine volt Eveready lantern battery, a Teal soft drink bottle that likely contained the accelerant and an incomplete copy of the June 18, 1977 edition of the Evening Post that lined the suitcase, a Vulcanite Flight brand last manufactured in New Zealand in 1971.
The leadership of the Wellingon trade unions had been in a meeting all day in a room straight on the other side of the wall, from where the Flight suitcase had been placed, at about 7:30am. The blast shoved a car parked outside two metres into the street.
Curiously, Murray J. Forbes didn’t include a chapter on the Wellington Trades Hall Bombing in his 1997 autobiography Confessions from the Front Line. Forbes was head of the Wellington Anti-Terrorism Squad from 1983 to 1995. ‘Coincidentally’, the Trades Hall Bombing of 27 March 1984 occurred on the historical anniversary of the 1928 opening of the National Industrial Conference. The bombing remains ‘unsolved’.
A Dutch-born engineer, Peter Dijkstra, seems to have been cast in a plot script as a scapegoat, since his surname riffed off the Dijkstra algorithm, which is a computer modelled solution for finding the shortest path between two points and was first applied for resolving travel, transportation and traffic problems. (Dijkstra said he came under suspicion because of his background in the Dutch military). The suitcase had been left outside the office of the Wellington Tramways Union, since earlier that morning. Ergo, a transportation metaphor appeared to be themed into the attack. It turns out, a detective’s provocative line of questioning accused Dijkstra of leaving the bomb outside the Wellington Tramways Office, saying the bomb was a retaliation for the Tramways strike of March 26. The detective asserted it affected Dijkstra’s travel.
It would appear that Dijkstra was cast as a suspect to fulfil the role of a ‘blind alley’.
Five months after the bombing, police found a more likely suspect. Edgar Kidman, a marine engineer, who lived in a ramshackle weatherbeaten house in Breaker Bay, on Wellington’s south coast. The pages that lined the suitcase were pages nine, 10, 19 and 20 of a June 18, 1977 Evening Post. These were the same pages alleged to be missing from the same edition found in Kidman’s home. Kidman matched the profile. Stuff reported that the police said Kidman told them he had skills in explosives. Indeed, Kidman was a former army sergeant with experience in handling gelignite.
In his article “Cold Case — the Trades Hall bombing case is close to getting its suspect” (30 June 2019), Jack van Beynen reported after a Cold Case episode, that in 1984 police executed a search warrant at an address connected to one of their suspects.
In addition to the newspaper, with the same pages missing, as those that were found in remnants of the blast debris, Police also found during a raid at the address four Teal brand soft drink bottles, a vice, some electrical tape, a roll of insulation tape, a packet of detonators, safety fuses, and a plastic torch that was missing batteries. Yet, Police said the circumstantial evidence wasn’t strong enough at the time to prosecute.
Police had a renewed interest in the bombing, and Kidman, after receiving an item of interest — similar to a key piece of the bomb — from the suspect’s former address 18 months ago. They hoped a forensics match would link a DNA sample from Kidman.
Despite promising leads, including an identikit picture of a man believed to have the Flight suitcase, last manufactured in 1971, and a Rica Banana sticker found stuck to a remnant of it among the debris, and Teal soft drink bottle stuffed with an Asti Ricadonna cork among the elements of the bomb, police have evidently been unable to meet the evidential threshold required by Crown Law. So, among the clues the news media found intriguing, was that the explosive device was wrapped in newspaper and its fragments from the scene were identified as coming from the June 18 1977 edition of the Wellington Evening Post. This clue gets more intriguing when the date of the bombing is cross-checked with A. W. Reed’s 1973 edition of It Happened Today in New Zealand. On 18 June 1838, the banker Francis Baring introduced a private bill in the British Parliament “to facilitate and regulate the settlement of Her Majesty’s subjects in New Zealand”. On the same date, 18 June in 1932, a former model, Esther James, reached Bluff by foot after starting out at Spirits Bay to promote New Zealand-made products during the Great Depression. NZ History records her walk was sponsored by the Government and the Manufacturers’ Federation. Thus, her arrival at Bluff on the historical introduction of Francis Baring’s private bill for the settlement of New Zealand neatly completed the historical significance of the start date, 3 December 1931, for the ‘buy New Zealand-made’ walk.
On 3 December 1863, the NZ Settlements Act was passed by Parliament to enable the Governor to confiscate land off “Maori rebels”, as A. W. Reed described the law. And on 3 December 1910, Freda du Faur became the first woman to ascend Mt Cook.
Ergo, where the ‘buy New Zealand-made’ walk had started on December 3 1931, and had coincided with the 3 December 1910 date when Freda du Faur became the first woman to ascend Mt Cook, and both events also coincided with the historical date of the New Zealand Settlements Act being passed in the Colonial Parliament on December 3 1863, it is uncanny that banker Francis Baring’s introduction of a private members bill on 18 June 1838 for the colonization of New Zealand, would later find correspondence with the sales promotion walk that ended at Bluff on 18 June 1932.
Therefore, these combined coincidences that had neatly book-ended Esther James’ buy New Zealand-made promotional walk, indicates a sinister plot in which the Trades Hall bomb had been packaged with some potent historical references, it would appear, to signal the trade union movement was an enemy of N.Z.’s deep state .
Moreover, on 3 December 1960, the Bluff Island Harbour facility opened. Therefore, it appears the metaphors that seem to be codified into the Trades Hall Bombing of 27 March 1984, communicated a capitalist class superiority complex over the unions.
Following the 35th anniversary of the Trades Hall Bombing, the season finale of a true crime genre series entitled, Cold Case, aired on the state-owned broadcaster, Television New Zealand. The airdate of 30 June 2019 was uncanny, because on the same date, 30 June in 1904, the Wellington Electric Tram Service opened. When it is recalled that the suitcase bomb had been placed on the floor outside the door of the Wellington Tramways Union Office, the airing of this episode appears to be a ritualized of exhibition of power sustained by this criminal network over the decades.
The bombing occurred a stone’s throw from a police station, which was located on a side street, Knigge’s Avenue, across from the Trades Hall. Were members of Wellington’s Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) signalling their authorship? ’Cause, isn’t it odd that Dijkstra’s house would be raided, given that his name conjured an algorithim for resolving travel, transportation and traffic problems? Especially, since the blast had occurred outside the office of the Wellington Tramways Union? And, isn’t it strange that an ex-MI5 intelligence operative, who was given safe haven in New Zealand, could fly out the next day without the Aviation Security Service detaining him? After-all, if the blast occurred in the HQ of the Government, the Police, or the SIS, the bombing would’ve been deemed terrorism. And, the capital’s Anti-Terrorism Squad would’ve become formally involved, surely? The forensic profile of the bomber conveniently sounded like a corny job description, to search for “a loner, possibly a hoarder who had difficulty maintaining relationships, was angry and fixated, had experience with explosives and held a grudge against the union movement.” It sounded like Muldoon, who was losing allies and who hoarded the reins of power.
In an interview for CrimesNZ on RNZ Podcasts, former Secretary Wellington Federation of Labour District Graeme Clark said that perhaps Edgar Kidman had a plausible defence that he hadn’t placed the bomb. The question arises about whether the newspaper with the exact pages missing that had been used to line the suitcase, had been planted at Kidman’s house in an attempt to frame him, as a decoy tactic.
After all, a Royal Commission into the Crewe Murders found police planted evidence.
Or, whether Kidman had been an unwitting party in the plot, in which someone had taken the pages from a collection of his old newspapers, while he was out and about.
Kidman said he had plenty of newspapers because he didn’t get around to throwing them out. He added that his habit was to mark up articles of interest, which he said would account for why there were pages missing from the June 18 1977 edition.
In any case, the apparent historical riffing in the Trades Hall Bombing seem staged.
As a modus operandi, such historical riffing signals authorship, cooperation, caution and to telegraph objectives. The signals also suggest players are communicating their cooperation to take a plot ‘live’, convey hidden objectives and broadcast psychotic humour, thereby posting themselves like hostages — as applied game theory predicts.
It would appear that New Zealand’s deep state criminal network was behind the Trades Hall Bombing. Since deep states inflict industrial sabotage, or terrorism and other crimes as part of multi-year covert low-grade wars, such networks operate to do what can’t be achieved by legal means, at speed, or at all — absent a crisis.
Given that at the time of Trades Hall Bombing, there was a political plot in place to bankroll a Labour Government to force through the economic shock ‘therapies’, the bomb plot may have been an attempt to wipe out the leadership of the Wellington trade union movement. Such a gruesome achievement would have rid the neo-feudal reformists of opposition to the impending corporate heist of the economy. The introduction of individualized worker contracts to break the unions would have to wait until the 1991, which occurred on the watch of King Country farmer, Jim Bolger.
Therefore, it is strange that Murray J. Forbes didn’t include a chapter on the Wellington Trades Hall Bombing in his 1997 autobiography Confessions from the Front Line. Recall that Forbes led the Wellington Anti-Terrorism Squad from 1983 to 1995?
Perhaps the Police didn’t have a copy of the Oxford Universal Dictionary, and that may be the reason the bombing wasn’t designated as terrorism. By failing to conclude that a blast was intended to kill indiscrimately inside a building full of trade unionists, it appears the Police top brass essentially cast themselves as a ‘confederacy of dunces’, to avoid activating the Officials Terrorism Committee, and risk more scrutiny.
Perhaps, the Police failed to ask the critical counter-question: if the bomb blasted through the lobby of a government or corporate headquarters, would the nebulous threshold for classifying the event as terrorism be lowered? If the bombing had been classed as terrorism, then perhaps the activities of the Wellington Anti-Terrorism Squad may have been scrutinized prior, during and after the Trades Hall Bombing.
Such scrutiny could have become awkward very fast, given Forbes’ associations.
In Confessions from the Front Line, Forbes bragged he travelled with former Rotorua CIB boss John Dewar (of the Louise Nicholas Story) to an Australian field command course at the beginning of May 1991. He met the staff at the New South Wales Training College in Goulburn. Forbes and Dewar travelled with Greg Martin and Austin Whittaker, two of the NSW SWAT Police. They went to the dinner at the Rocks, followed by a show at Kings Cross. Ergo, his bragging by the capital’s former Anti-Terrorist Squad leader hasn’t aged well. Dewar was convicted in 2007 for sabotaging attempts by Louise Nicholas to get three policemen jailed for gang-rape.
The Trades Hall bomb plot remained unsolved at the 40th anniversary in 2024.
Ergo, my key finding is that the Trades Hall Bombing was thematically encoded with transport and class conflict metaphors codified into the historical riffs to signal cooperation, authorship, and caution — while telegraphing a spooky objective.
A homegrown deep state network had free rein to inflict terrorism with impunity.
* Each of the examined crises are entwined either by dates, institutions and players, or by references to prior events, either domestic or international, that indicate NZ’s national security state is more interested in accumulating power than fully disclosing the truth of such events. Patterns emerge such as training exercises ‘going live’, institutional transitions impairing emergency responders, and an apparent ‘too stupid to be stupid’ modus operandi that is repeatedly passed off as bureaucratic blunders, corporate clownery or government grandeur. Yet, hidden hands are detectable. The broad range of crises points to a well-resourced criminal network that functions with hierarchical structures and with deep penetration in New Zealand institutions, to command an operational level army of ‘soldiers’ to implement the complex plots.
SEE related: Darkest Days by Dates Down Under series introduction
Moving a Mountain — The Crash of Flight TE901: November 28 1979
Darkest Days by Dates Down Under: Part 1 [The Snoopman Files]
The Great Divide — 1981 Springbok Rugby Tour, New Zealand
Darkest Days by Dates Down Under: Part 2 [The Snoopman Files]
Transport Themed Terrorism — Wellington Trades Hall Bombing, March 27 1984
Darkest Days by Dates Down Under: Part 3 [The Snoopman Files]
Kiwi Dollar Weaponized as Ransom Notes — 'Bastille Day' Currency Crisis, 1984 Darkest Days by Dates Down Under: Part 4 [The Snoopman Files]
Accommodating France — Rainbow Warrior Bombing, 10 July 1985
Darkest Days by Dates Down Under: Part 5 [The Snoopman Files]
See also: “Terror Archipelago Down Under? Pt 1 Industrial Sabotage, Ritual Terrorism, and Police State Formation in New Zealand” on Snoopman News
Back when Steve Snoopman was ‘Snoopboy’, he delivered the Auckland Star during the dark days of the Reagan White House. He forged his superpower to ‘Thunk Evil Without Being Evil’ while writing a thesis on the Global Financial Crisis. Upon quipping that Batman had failed to bust any Gotham banker balls — since his ass is owned by DC Comics — he consequently realised New Zealand needed a Snoopman.
Editor’s Note: If we have made any errors, please contact Steve ‘Snoopman’ Edwards with your counter-evidence. e: steveedwards108[at]protonmail.com
Steve Snoopman also posts on Snoopman News [at] https://snoopman.net.nz/